SARRACENIA DRUMMONDII. 

 DRUMMOND'S PITCHER-PLANT. 



NATURAL ORDER, SARRACENIACE^E. 



SARRACENIA Drummondii, Cioom. — Leaves elongated, erect, trumpet-shaped, narrowly 

 winged; lamina erect, rounded, short-pointed, hairy within, and like the upper portion of 

 the tube white, variegated with reticulated purple veins. Leaves two feet long. .Scapes 

 longer than the leaves. Flowers three inches wide. (Chapman's Flora of the Southeni 

 United States. See also Wood's Class-Book of Botany, imder the name of S. Gronovii, 

 var. Dnivifnondii.) 



I 



ONGFELLOW, in describing an old-time slave hiding 

 from his pursuers in a southern swamp, says : 



" Where will-o'-lhe-wisps and glow-worms shine, 



In bulrush and in brake : 

 Where waving mosses shroud the pine. 

 And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine 



Is spotted like the snake : 



" Where hardly a human foot could pass, 



Or a human heart would dare, 

 On the quaking turf of the green morass 

 He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, 



Like a wild beast in his lair." 



It is not often that a poet writing with one subject only in 

 view, at the same time happens to paint the portrait of something 

 entirely absent from, his mind. Yet every one who has collected 

 Drummond's pitcher-plant will recognize a very fair picture of 

 it amidst its surroundings in the lines quoted. It is a car-^ 

 nivorous plant, secreting in its pitcher-like leaves water into 

 which insects are enticed, drowned, and eaten, as some botanists 

 say. Besides growing among poisonous vines spotted like the 

 snake, it is itself spotted ; and just where the waving " Spanisli 

 moss" shrouds the pine, and in swamps where a human foot can 



